Here are some photos and videos from my backcountry touring trip into the Selkirk
Lodge in the South Selkirks on Albert Icefield, BC.

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For the third year, I was invited to join Dave, Dicky and Alex along with Chris and Eric this year
for a week-long backcountry skiing tour based at Selkirk Lodge, BC, near Revelstoke.
We started our trip with a morning ski at Revelstoke Mountain Resort where the mountain could
definitely use more snow, although the sun was great and the views outstanding.
Here is Dave Lewinsohn waiting at the mid-mountain gondola station with a lot of exposed dirt.

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A new addition to the trip, Eric Hansen came along this year. Here he is with a great view to the
south of the mountain across the Columbia River.

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This is Alex Birman with a bluebird sky off to the south as well.

Heading to Selkirk Lodge

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Although I had skied with him a little on Mt Hood previously while in Oregon ( LINK to previous trip ), this was the first time
I had taken a backcountry trip with Chris Riedener.
Here he is at the Albert Canyon helicopter
staging area. A side note that this is the same area where the Albert Canyon Hot Springs are.
A further note is the elevation of 2220 ft from this location. We are heading almost a vertical mile
up to our lodge.

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After having such a rough time with the keg at the last Selkirk trip ( HERE ),
and after doing so well with the party pigs at Battle Abbey ( HERE ), I decided to bring them again.
Here is one Wred Wheat Ale party pig from the Wildrose Brewery in Calgary, AB being placed into the helicopter.
More about the Wildrose HERE .

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A better view of the pig sticking out from the seat on the helicopter. I brought 2 IPA, 1 Wred Ale, and
one Brown Ale. Next time, 3 IPAs seem to be the right number.

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Here is Dave Lewinsohn in the helicopter on the 9 minute ride up to the lodge.

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A view out of the front of the chopper flying up the valley to our lodge.

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Here is a shot of the chopper after dropping us off. Once dropped off, we set up our bedrooms,
did a beacon practice and group practice, ate dinner, and hit the sack to get ready for our big first day.

Skiing at the Selkirk Lodge

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Once again, we were blessed with a remarkable first day of weather. Here is the Justice Glacier just
coming into morning sun. This is the view from the beer deck at the Selkirk Lodge. Yeah, really.

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Outside the hut, getting ready for our first day of skiing, Dave shows off his BD Havocs.

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Our first day, we descended down to the valley bottom and crossed over to the Albert Glacier. This is
Alex with the Paradise run and Paradise Icefall showing behind him.

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Considering this area really hadn't seen a lot of snow in the last few weeks, we initially had pretty low
expectations for this trip. However, as can be seen here, the snow looks pretty good already, and
any day with good visibility and clear weather still allows for some neat exploring. This picture is
from the valley bottom looking roughly southwest towards the run called Solitude

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Once we got above the ice falls, we were now on a run called Paradise which we had to cross
and then climb.

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Looking back across the valley to where the lodge is. A cold beer seems like a long ways away when you're
looking down a few thousand vertical feet to where it's chilling. Again, you can see the lodge if you look
really closely.

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We climbed this ridge for awhile. I thought it looked pretty cool especially since snow dropped
sharply from each side of it.

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A cool shot of Chris skinning on the ridge on the way up to Sanctuary .

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You'll notice that I used Chris as the foreground of a lot of my photos this trip. He was wearing bright
coloured gear, making for better photos, and he took a lot of photos of me. From this shot, the view is
looking to the south into the next range.

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We skied Sanctuary until we got too close to some crevasses. Here is Dave with an interesting
snow/ice feature on the side of the glacier.

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The long day (about 15 km and ~6000 vertical feet) took it out of me and I chose to skip the extra run.
This meant that myself and another guy named Jim had to traverse across some interesting terrain to get
caught up with the early bus. This is a shot of some of the BIG terrain on the glacier that we
had to avoid to make it home. That's a lot more crevasses than I'm used to seeing. Big first day for sure!

On Sunday night, the snow started coming down finally. It came down for quite some time meaning
that we decided to stay low. We skied Balls of Chrome , Oasis , and got a
really nice run on Marten before coming home.

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Here is Dicky giving his trademark wave prior to us heading out for the day.

Video of Dave skiing the bottom of a run

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I didn't really take any photos since the snow was still coming down hard. Here is the Selkirk Lodge
from the skin track heading home.

Day 3 saw us heading back up high since the weather got amazing again. We summited out Primrose
Peak and made it to the top of three other col/peaks.

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Here is Alex Birman with his Insane skis getting ready for our big day.

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We skinned up Primrose and dropped into Pink , which was unbelievable and full of powder.
This is Sue looking over to Fluff , which we didn't ski due to changing light levels making it
difficult to see the crevasses.

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Here is Jim on the uptrack from the bottom of Pink , looking up at a mean-looking chute.

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A little better shot of this chute with Chris in the foreground. I took this for my friend Shaun
Lindsay, who skis just about anything.

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Just before we got to the top of Solitude, we stopped for a bite of lunch. Here is Dave
with an amazing view behind him.

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Here is Dicky Lum with a roughly size 2 avalanche that came down the night before. It looks like the
slope slid on the surface hoar layer about 80 cm down and was triggered by a falling cornice from above.

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Our great guide Jim advised us to take lunch out of the wind, so we dropped into this ice cave in the sun.
Alex is in the foreground here and the ice cave formed around a lake where glacier chunks would calve.

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This is an ice bridge that you can walk right under. Pretty neat. We then skied all the way back up
to the top of this route and then all the way around the Albert Icefield for the longest ski day I've ever
had for sure. I almost bonked, but due to the good nature (and careful eye) of Mike and his caffeinated
jujubes, I made it home in one piece.

After this epic day, the next two were spent enjoying the ~65cm of snow that fell next.
Just ridiculous how perfect the weather turned out for us.

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Here is Dicky smiling after a fun run through the trees with deep snow.

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Dicky covered in snow after a sick run with face shots galore.

I didn't get any photos on the Friday due to the stupidly deep snow, but here are my photos
from our last ski day at Selkirk Lodge where we did a full run on Lodge Run as well
as Sweet Stuff and Cruiser

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Due to the almost 1m of fresh snow that fell in the last few days, the avalanche conditions were definitely
touchy to say the least. Here is Eric Hansen on our last morning.

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We had no problem polishing off 4 party pigs, and as it turns out, one of the other guests was from Calgary
and brought a pig of oatmeal stout from Wild Rose Brewery as well. Here is a shot of one of the empty pigs
with the Justice Glacier in the distance.

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A view down to the lodge from the skin track up to Lodge Run .

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Chris, looking at the run called Wolverine going down into Marten . Behind him you can see
a few smaller slides that had gone earlier in the day.

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As we were waiting for the guides to clear out some of this slope, we all felt the snow wumph. The sound
we felt was this sympathetic slide that came down just below the lodge next to our tracks.

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A better view of the slide at the bottom of Lodge Run. I'd say it was about a 1.5.

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Our last day was a bit of a gift, being so warm as to feel like springtime. I skied in only a shirt
for most of the morning since it was so warm. The Justice Glacier looks great with the sun on it and
a single skin track leading away from it (ours).

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Even a low-angled slope like Cruiser here was enough to make me eat some powder. I'll get better...

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The run book at Selkirk Lodge details all of the more popular runs.